Curiosity Rover to Scoop Up 1st Mars Samples This Weekend

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NASA's Mars rover Curiosity will scoop up its first batch of
Martian soil samples this weekend, scientists announced today
(Oct. 4).

The 1-ton
Curiosity rover arrived at a sandy patch called "Rocknest" on
Wednesday (Oct. 3). Mission scientists have deemed it a good spot
for the robot's maiden scooping activities, which should begin
Saturday (Oct. 6), if all goes according to plan.

Curiosity's scoop system, which sits at the end of its 7-foot
(2.1-meter) robotic arm, is designed to deliver samples into two
analytical instruments on the rover's body — SAM ( Sample
Analysis at Mars ) and CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy). But
Martian sand from the first few scoops won't make it that far;
rather, it'll be used to clean out the handling system,
researchers said.

"We want to be sure the first sample we analyze is unambiguously
Martian, so we take these steps to remove any residual material
from Earth that might be on the walls of our sample handling
system," Curiosity sampling system scientist Joel Hurowitz, of
NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a
statement.

SAM and CheMin are the core science instruments aboard Curiosity,
and are crucial to its quest to determine if Mars has ever been
capable of supporting
microbial life. The rover team therefore wants to make sure
that the sampling system feeding the two instruments is working
properly, so they plan to take their time testing things out.

Indeed, Curiosity will likely remain at Rocknest for the next two
to three weeks, with the first bits of soil only dropping into
SAM and CheMin for analysis toward the end of that stretch, team
members said.

"This is the most complicated thing. It's an EDL-like challenge,
you know, to get these samples through the system," said
Curiosity mission manager Mike Watkins of JPL, referring to the
rover's harrowing entry, descent and landing inside Mars' Gale
Crater on the night of Aug. 5.

"Bear with us as we go through the next couple of weeks here," he
added.

Curiosity is on its way to a site called Glenelg, where three
different types of Martian terrain come together. Glenelg lies
about 330 feet (100 m) east of Rocknest, researchers said, and
Curiosity will hit the road again when its scooping trial is
done.

Once at Glenelg, the rover team will likely begin looking for
suitable rocks to test out Curiosity's drill for the first time.
The drill check-out will be complicated as well, taking at least
as long as the rover's first scooping activity, Watkins said.

While Curiosity is rumbling toward Glenelg, the rover's main
science target is the base of Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles
(5.5 kilometers) high from Gale Crater's center. The mountain's
foothills show signs of long-ago exposure to liquid water.

Mount Sharp's interesting mineral deposits lie about 6 miles (10
km) away from Curiosity's landing site. The rover could be ready
to begin the long trek by the end of the year, scientists have
said.

Curiosity is nearly two months into a planned two-year mission on
the surface of Mars. It has put 1,588 feet (484 m) on its
odometer to date, researchers said.